


We Bound the Book That Tells Our Story

by pamdizzle



Series: Welcome to Midam Hell... [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, Reunions, The Empty (Supernatural), canonverse, implied resurrected Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:47:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27579356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pamdizzle/pseuds/pamdizzle
Summary: Just because the show did not (and likely will not) further explore the wonderful dynamic they introduced in 15x08 does not mean we end it with whatever the hell that was in 15x19. Instead, I give you this: A post-canon fix-it dedicated the most emotionally mature, healthy relationship in the history of the SPN canonical universe, between the archangel Michael and Adam Milligan.This is a continuation of my Midam Hell Series.Excerpt:It is only as he feels the last tendril of Adam’s awareness eke away from their home, the space they have shared for more than a millennium, that it is suddenly achingly, painfully clear. He should have taken Adam and fled as far and fast as is possible to get. It is his greatest regret that he did not.For the very moment Adam leaves him, Michael is cast adrift. He seeks answers in the places he himself built, but it is futile like everything that follows. Now, in this place where nothing lives but retrospect, he realizes that Lucifer was right. Gabriel was right. Raphael, Metatron, and even Castiel.Michael is pathetic, and this is what he deserves. This is how he will atone for the price of his ego.
Relationships: Michael/Adam Milligan
Series: Welcome to Midam Hell... [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977553
Comments: 59
Kudos: 145





	We Bound the Book That Tells Our Story

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, no. Nice fucking try, assholes.
> 
> Anyway...That hiatus didn't last long, did it? At any rate, this is my humble offering of a potential what happens next for Adam and Michael.

In the empty, Michael sleeps. Or, something like it. It resembles the meditation of the devout, in a way. He is aware of where he is, distantly, but too consumed by the tenacity of certain thoughts to pay it much consideration. Memories, all tinged with regret, which he cannot ignore make it impossible for him to settle.

He wonders if this is how Adam must have felt in those first centuries of Hell before Michael spared him a thought; scared and alone, nothing but his anxiety to keep him company. Thoughts of Adam should offer solace in this darkened existence, instead they lead only to contrition. More and more as eternity wears on, for Michael cannot help but replay their last moments together, over and over.

They are sat on a bench in the middle of a park, somewhere in America. There are dogs on leashes, keeping pace with their human companions jogging along trails, others run along the green catching frisbees while children swarm around swing sets and jungle gyms. But their forms are blurry, faceless shapes in Michael’s peripheral as his eyes focus on the only true wonder among them.

Adam finishes off an ice cream cone, licking his fingers without reserve or any consideration for manners while in the throes of his enjoyment. Michael is, for a moment, so caught up in reverie, in the sweet memory of Adam’s soul twisted about his grace just hours ago, that he fails to notice the change in the wind. Or rather, the absence of it among the growing quiet, a slow decrescendo of life’s background hum giving way to silence.

“You know,” Adam says, “I’ve been thinking…”

Michael quirks a brow. “About?”

“Well, the moon probably looks different now than it did on Day Four,” he suggests, eyes averted as if he could ever hide from Michael.

Still, he plays along. “What about your bucket list? Tired of sight-seeing already?”

“No! No, of course not,” he’s quick to deny, but then he closes his mouth with a click as he runs anxious fingers through their hair. “Okay, look…I can’t stop thinking about this thing between your dad and my brothers, right? And, I don’t know, I’m just…I’m scared, I guess? I feel like we’re strapped to a table while the pendulum of doom swings ever closer.”

Adam heaves a great sigh, adds, “Its selfish, I know. I just. Sam and Dean keep praying to you, and I just…I don’t want to lose you.”

Michael hums. In truth, he cannot help but think there is some greater purpose to his Father’s machinations. That if only they could speak, Michael could discern his true intentions. He doesn’t mention this to Adam. Instead, he replies, “You are the most selfless human I have ever known.”

Adam smiles at that, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. Michael will wonder, for all eternity, what it is those words had lacked. What could he have said instead to free Adam of such doubt? To make it clear he has no intention of involving them in any unfolding drama between their two families.

Michael will always wonder because Adam takes a breath, and suddenly he is being wrenched away. Michael feels the essence of Adam’s soul evaporate from the shelter of his mortal body and no matter how quickly Michael reaches for him, he slips through Michael’s grace like sand.

Like powder.

Like dust.

It is only as he feels the last tendril of Adam’s awareness eke away from their home, the space they have shared for more than a millennium, that it is suddenly achingly, painfully clear. He should have taken Adam and fled as far and fast as is possible to get. It is his greatest regret that he did not.

For the very moment Adam leaves him, Michael is cast adrift. He seeks answers in the places he himself built, but it is futile like everything that follows. Now, in this place where nothing lives but retrospect, he realizes that Lucifer was right. Gabriel was right. Raphael, Metatron, and even Castiel.

Michael is pathetic, and this is what he deserves. This is how he will atone for the price of his ego.

Forever reliving the moment happiness was wrested from him. Over and over and over unable to control the direction of his thoughts, unable to stop. There is no punishment more fitting. Adam spent a thousand years saving him in hell, yet Michael only failed him repeatedly. If only…

If only his Father would have listened. If only Michael could have counseled Him as he had countless times before. They could have fixed things, reshaped the world and returned to Heaven. Restored humanity to the paradise that was promised. Or, perhaps, those promises were always empty. It has been hard to accept that everything Michael was taught, everything he was shown and everything he was made for is a lie.

So, instead, he thinks of Adam. They're sitting on a bench in the middle of a park somewhere in America. Michael only has eyes for light brown hair, the imperfect array of countless freckles. He doesn’t notice the growing silence of the world around them. It is a perfect irony that he waited so long for the rapture to arrive that once it was upon him, he missed it entirely.

Why hadn’t he noticed it? It seems such an obvious silence amid the clarity of his memories.

“I’ve always found this place so strange,” a new, but familiar voice says. It intrudes upon the wheel of Michael's singular focus, forces it to a sudden, jarring stop.

Then, suddenly, Jack is standing before him, and they are surrounded by endless darkness. The only two beings awake in the entire vast emptiness between space and time. The power which now radiates from the boy like a supernova is a presence in and of itself, however.

“It is over, then” Michael surmises. “My Father is perished?”

“Yes,” Jack says, “and no.” His mouth quirks into something of a smile, eyes too old and too knowing to sit within a face so young and unassuming. “He’s been…remade. He will live, and die, like the mortals he himself created, but never truly understood.”

Michael…does not know how to feel about this new information. This news of his Father should make him feel something, surely. Anger on His behalf? Perhaps even satisfaction at His fate? Instead, Michael only feels numb, weary. Mostly, though, he worries for Adam.

Their last moments together are all too clear within in his mind. His too-small smile and worried eyes. They were sitting on a bench in the middle of a park, somewhere in America.

“You know,” Jack says, “I have this theory about angels.”

Michael blinks, the whirring miasma of his thoughts once again interrupted. He raises an inquisitive brow, curious.

“Castiel once told me that angels were created to follow orders. That they were commanded to love and care for humanity, but that the kind of love humans experience, was never part of their design,” he explains. “Yet Castiel learned how to love as one anyway. And you…”

Jack tilts his head, assessing Michael in a way that makes his grace shift restlessly against the barriers of the Empty. He knows what he must see; that Michael failed to learn what came so effortlessly to Castiel, to Anna and even Gabriel. That while he loves Adam in his way, he is incapable of loving him as he deserves, as humans need. He has long worried at this fact, that it might be what finally drove Adam from his side had his Father not raptured him away first. After all, Michael is, above all else, a failure. Nothing he has tried since his Father left has worked. He has not met with a single victory.

He longs for Adam so fiercely in that moment, that he is forced to close his eyes against the clawing ache of it. How pathetic he has become that he can no longer cope with solitude. Wasn’t it just yesterday, they’d been sat on a bench…

“You’re in love with him,” Jack says, intrigue written plainly among his features. “With Sam and Dean's brother.”

“Adam,” Michael says, then dares to ask the question whose answer could destroy him. “Where is he?”

“I restored him to earth with the others,” Jack tells him. “I thought he deserved a chance to live his life.”

Michael is flooded with sudden relief and so much regret. “He deserves everything.”

“He misses you.”

The words strike him like a spear. “He remembers?”

“Why would he have forgotten?”

“It will trouble him,” Michael warns. “And trouble will find him if he looks for me. Please, you must—”

“See? Exactly,” Jack interjects. “Chuck never intended for angels to love like that, but he never did anything to expressly prevent it and I think it was the only way he could ensure continued adoration among his first children without granting them free will.”

Michael frowns. “That makes no sens—”

“Love—human love—is about choice.” Jack tells him. “You have to choose it, and not just once, but over and over and over, because sometimes the people we love disappoint us. That doesn’t mean we stop loving them. You were commanded to love Chuck, but you chose to love Adam. You still choose it, even though this place is using it to torture you.”

“We forged a bond together in hell. It was circumstance—”

“You could have ignored him.” Jack grins. “You chose not to.”

“It is generally considered disrespectful to enter another’s mind without their consent,” Michael testily informs. “I would appreciate it if you would exercise some refrain.”

“Apologies. I haven’t figured out all the…controls just yet,” he admits. “I just meant that you haven’t failed him. Your love for Adam is so great, so intricate and complete, that I could feel your anguish calling to me like a beacon the moment I arrived here.”

“Why would you even bother to acknowledge it?” He questions. “I betrayed you. I don’t deserve—”

Jack shrugs. “We were counting on it, actually. Your loyalty was the defining quality of Chuck’s invention.”

Michael does not know what to say to that, so he says nothing.

“You were his first character,” Jack explains, unaware of Michael’s turmoil. “You were more bound to his will than anyone. The star of his first story, though neither of us were meant to be more than a footnote in his later narrative. The point is, we are more now than the purpose he wrote for us. You aren’t his puppet anymore. None of us are.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Michael asks, closing his throat around a despair he does not have the strength to confront. “Why are you here?”

“I got distracted.” Jack smiles again, his expression softening. “I actually came to see about a friend.”

Castiel. Of course.

“I understand.” Michael dips his chin. “For what it’s worth, I regret your position in this. Correcting the sins of my Father should never have fallen to you. He always abhorred disobedience, but I never thought him capable of such malevolence. I thought He would listen to me…I could not fathom the depth of his deceptions. I could not see.”

Jack tilts his head consideringly. “You think I mean to leave you here.”

Michael blinks. “Yes.” It has not occurred to him in all the time they have been speaking that any other possibility existed. Michael has learned that, ultimately, he is disposable. That it is his destiny to be left behind.

“I disagree,” this new Power tells him, once again providing an answer to words unspoken. “I think you can still find purpose. In fact,” Jack adds with a grin, and he is clearly making it all up as he goes. Michael does not know if he should feel comforted by this fact or terrified. “I may have a job for you.”

\--

Jack returns them to earth with little more than a thought, the Empty presumably unaware of anything amiss as the other dormant entities remain in mournful slumber for all time. They cross the boundaries between realms and one moment they are encased in nothing, the next, Michael is bathed in sunlight, its rays warm against his grace as he settles into a new vessel.

“How long has it been?” he wonders.

“Around four earth weeks,” Jack replies easily. “I had to give the Empty time to settle.”

“You could easily destroy it,” Michael says, a pointed fact.

“I could,” Jack concedes, “but Billie didn’t lie about everything. There is a balance, and it should be maintained.”

“And you haven’t just upset it?”

“I don’t think so,” he replies, sure. “The Empty could have gone back to sleep anytime, but it was fixated. Now, it’s had its vengeance, it feels obliged to rest. By the time it realizes anything is amiss…there won’t be anyone but me to hold accountable.”

“And me.”

“Maybe. But you won’t have to face it alone next time.”

Michael scoffs, rueful at the thought. “Next time.” He stretches the fingers of his temporary vessel. Hopefully temporary. He grows less certain by the moment.

“Go to him,” Jack tells him then.

“What about…” Michael trails off when he turns around to find that Jack has already left. He sucks in a breath he doesn’t need, closes his eyes and begins his search. It doesn’t take long. Michael removed the sigils from Adam’s ribs long ago. With no small amount of trepidation, he spreads his wings and tears through space and time until he alights upon a park in Windom, Minnesota.

It’s midday, the sun is high and Michael spots him at once, his grace drawn to Adam’s soul like a lodestone. Michael forces the limbs of his vessel to cooperate as he slowly approaches. He doesn’t wish to startle him, looking like he does. Wearing an unfamiliar shape.

But of course, Adam surprises him.

The moment his shadow creeps to block the sun from Adam’s vulnerable skin, pale blue eyes—a color and shape Michael has seen on many human faces throughout time, yet none have been so captivating. They snap up to meet his own and this human, this small, underrated marvel, gasps. He knows Michael immediately, and how can that be?

“Michael?” Adam whispers, and the ground must rise up to meet him, for surely Michael, archangel of a fallen Lord, does not go to his knees; does not cast himself down at mankind’s feet.

But he does.

He _does_.

“Adam,” he utters beseechingly, voice shaking to match the tremble of unfamiliar hands as they reach for the man before him, yet Michael drops them just as swiftly. He is filled with a quick and sudden shame. “Forgive me,” he begs, head bowed in a show of supplication he has never afforded anyone save his Father. “Forgive me.”

In the end, it does not matter that Michael has denied himself the right to touch, that he does not deserve it. Gentle hands frame his face, convince him to raise his gaze and meet whatever judgement lies ahead. Adam has shifted forward to the very edge of the bench, his gangly limbs scrunched up on either side of Michael’s vessel to accommodate their proximity.

“It’s really you,” he says. “It’s really—who the hell are you wearing?”

Michael can feel a chagrined smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “There are few capable of accommodating me. Despite your brothers’ experiences in the apocalypse world, this James is a devoted father, and a loving husband. A good man.”

“How accommodating?” Adam asks, his eyebrow inclined acerbically.

“None could ever compare to you,” Michael’s reply is instant, guileless. He finds that once he has started, the words cannot be stopped. “From the moment you were parted from me, I have been lost.”

Adam winces. “I could feel myself slipping away but then I woke up on the ground, alone, in the middle of the same park. I didn’t know what to do, or where to go, so I called Dean.” Adam hesitates, then adds, “He…told me what happened.”

Michael clenches his teeth. “I should have taken us away from here.”

“You didn’t know.”

“I would have,” he argues. “If I had gone with Lilith.”

“There was no reason to believe she wasn’t lying,” Adam insists, “It could have been a trap.”

“We ended up trapped anyway,” Michael reminds him. “Why are you making excuses for me?” he demands, more harshly than he means to. “If you truly knew the full extent of my humiliation, then you would not be so quick to my defense.”

Adam smiles, eyes soft and patient. “Tell me, then, what it is I’m supposed to forgive.”

“I used your brothers. I betrayed them,” he says, unwilling to bow his head beneath the strain of his guilt, mighty burden though it is. “I thought if I could only speak to Him, I could convince him to make good on his promise to mankind, to my brothers…to me. He was the only one with the power to bring you back.”

Michael feels his jaw working around the hard truth lodged in his throat. When he finds the will to continue, his voice is hoarse with the waning threads of his control. “He did not even allow me to speak.”

Adam leans forward to rest his forehead against that of Michael’s vessel. “Michael, hey, it’s—”

“He unmade me,” Michael blurts, leaning back, his eyes widening with the onslaught of freshly remembered horror. “He made sure I could feel it; he burnt me alive from the inside out, dissected me into pieces, reduced my grace to particles and scattered me to the wind, and…He enjoyed it.”

“Jesus.” Adam's hands cup Michael’s face, breath ghosting across his skin as he quietly consoles, “I’m so sorry, Michael. I know how much He meant to you.”

“How—” Michael chokes. How can Adam so easily speak the truth of him? How can he understand so clearly what so many others—so many others that would claim to be his betters—have never understood? That Michael has always loved his Father without question, not because he was commanded to but because it felt only right to love the One that assembled him from nothing simply to bestow the gift of creation. For the first time in his existence, Michael weeps.

It should be impossible, but Jack has returned him different, changed. He feels it now, the way his emotions are so much closer to the surface than they ought to be, his control tenuous. He is no closer to mortality than he was, not as Castiel has been with broken wings and diminished grace. Why? Was it deliberate? His focus is torn when Adam’s thumbs swipe along Michael’s cheekbones and his lips press consolatory kisses against his forehead, his nose, his mouth.

“I know it hurts, but you’re going to be okay. We’re both going to be okay now,” Adam tells him. “I’ve missed you so much. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Why are you not angry with me?” Michael asks miserably. “After I failed you—”

“You did not fail me!” Adam insists.

“You tried to tell me,” he argues, adamant in his rebuttal. “You tried to tell me and I refused to hear you even after seeing Castiel’s memories for myself. I should have helped your brothers with their plan, I—”

“But you did,” Adam tells him.

“Not intentionally,” he says. “It matters, Adam.”

“Yes, it does. What you did…you did it for me. Why should I be angry?”

“Because you were depending on me. I promised I would keep you safe, yet he vanished humanity and you along with it!” Michael practically shouts, bracing both hands Adam's shoulders so he can lean back and find his gaze. “You went beyond my reach, and there was nothing I could do to save you but so many things I could have done to prevent it! I—”

Adam steals the words from his mouth, forces them back down his throat, when he pushes his way forward to kiss Michael into silence. It is a different experience when they are not sharing the same body; an exhilarating relief, yet not nearly enough with these mortal barriers between them.

It is an addiction; a closeness Michael craves, a thirst he cannot possibly quench from such a distance. He wants nothing more than to wind his grace around Adam's soul and never let go. He groans against Adam's lips at the mere thought of it.

“Fuck,” Adam mutters, breath skittering between them as he presses kiss after to kiss to Michael’s lips, his hands clutching desperately at Michael’s coat.

Michael practically falls against him, seeking to be as close as physically possible. “I’ve missed you,” he confesses. “I miss you still. In the Empty, I longed only for you. It frightens me, Adam, how desperately I need you.”

Adam's fingers shift along his scalp, holding Michael still and captivated as he demands, “What are you waiting for?”

“Adam…”

“Be with me, Michael,” Adam prays—prays to _him_. “Come home.”

“Yes,” is his only answer. He cannot accept quickly enough, spares only a moment to ensure James will safely return to his life before returning himself to his own.

Adam’s soul crashes into him at once with a force that carries them across hundreds of miles. They land somewhere along the shore of Lake Michigan and that is all he knows as finally—finally—they are whole again. Their body trembles against the sand as it fights to contain the entities within, pushing and pulling at one another, and Michael is powerless to withdraw, let alone construct any barriers.”

“Adam…we can’t…”

“Why?” Adam asks, as if the answer somehow isn’t obvious. Maybe it isn’t. “I’ve been talking to you in my head for weeks, but you weren’t here to answer. For the first time in a thousand years, Michael, I couldn’t hear your voice. I couldn’t feel you at all, and I never, never want to do that again.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Michael tells him, fighting it despite how badly he wants it too.

“I’m asking for eternity,” Adam declares, “with you.”

Michael’s tenuous control shatters. He can scarcely believe the words as they crash and echo around him. He cannot fathom their meaning, not when so many others have cast him aside so easily. He finds himself asking, “Why?”

“Because you belong to me,” Adam says, the warmth of his certainty a caress against Michael’s grace. “We belong to each other.”

There is nothing he can say to that—no, there is, there is so much he could say, so many reasons Adam cannot want this. The simple truth is, that he does not _want_ to argue it, and Adam will not hear it anyway. And so, he lets his grace expand to meet with the reaching threads of Adam’s soul and instead of a barrier, he weaves a series of unbreakable knots. There will be no secrets between them, no boundaries, no distance. 

When it is done, for a long while after, they simply exist, their body in stasis as they explore the limits of their new arrangement. They communicate without words, exchanging images, impressions, or feelings instead. Michael can taste—actually taste—what Adam had for lunch. And Adam, shy yet determined, calls upon Michael’s grace as if he were born to it, shifting the sand around them into countless tiny sandcastles.

“Whimsical,” Michael says, because he enjoys speaking. “These remind me of Gabriel. You would have liked him.”

“Probably,” Adam reasons as they sift through Michael’s memories of his younger brother. Far too perceptive, he gives voice to Michael’s unspoken insecurities, “But he’s no you.”

It is silly, a word no one would dare ever ascribe to him, that such declarations should thrill him so, but Michael is moved despite himself.

“This is wild.” Adam chuckles. “Unorthodox, my ass. You don’t know half the shit you pretend to, do you?”

“I cannot know what has never been tried,” Michael replies. “It is— _was_ forbidden. As I have told you more times than I can count.”

“Fair enough,” Adam concedes, and for a moment, Michael believes he means to continue but there comes an unexpected shift, followed by a flash of awe and then Adam is stretching their wings. “Holy shit!”

Adam brims with excitement, an impossible childhood dream of flight suddenly made real. Michael begins to offer, “If you want, I could teach you to—”

“Wait!” Adam interjects. “I mean, yes! Definitely, I want to learn to fly, but does this mean I can see us now? Like, can I see your true form without burning our eyeballs out?”

“In theory,” he posits, “though no precedent exists.” Any number of things could go wrong, in truth, but Michael finds himself smiling anyway. “We’ll add it to your bucket list.”

Adam laughs, a full-body expression of joy at the reminder of his ‘Escape from Hell World Tour’ agenda. “Oh, man. Hell yes! Aaaaand, we need to make a list for you now too! You can actually experience the world from the human perspective now, Michael, and you know what that means!”

“More diners.”

“Exactly!” Adam crows. “I’m thinking pizza first—no! No. Burgers, then pizza, then ice cream.”

Michael screws their face up into a grimace. “I’m already regretting this.”

Adam scoffs, nudging Michael’s grace. “No, you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he needlessly confesses. “If this is how we are to begin eternity, then I regret nothing that has come before it.”

“I love you, too,” Adam says, “you hopeless romantic.”

“Romantic?” Michael is certain that is a term which does not apply to himself. At all.

“Are you kidding me?” Adam huffs. “I’m a human, you’re an angel, we endured the trials of hell, fell in love, triumphed over evil together, _and_ there was only one bed, or body! Whatever, we are literally soul bound right now. That’s basically the plot of every supernatural romance novel in existence, er…uh, not that I’ve read that many—”

“One hundred and seventy-three, to be exact,” Michael helpfully informs.

“Fuck you.”

“If you must.”

“Oh, I must,” he instantly replies, the connotation thrilling them both, before Adam regains focus. “Those novels were required reading, I’ll have you know,” he futilely claims. “It was all in the name of science!”

“No, it wasn’t.” Michael blinks and shifts their reality so that he is braced above Adam on the beach, hips bracketed by welcoming thighs. “You needn’t ever feel ashamed of anything that brings you joy.”

Adam’s throat clicks, swallowing around the emotions Michael can feel him struggling to process. Hesitantly, he confesses, “I died before I could finish the one hundredth and seventy-third one.”

“We’ll reread it together,” Michael promises.

“I can’t believe you,” Adam says then, eyes brimming with unshed tears. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy and this scared at the same time. My whole life, Michael, nothing good has ever lasted.”

“We’ve already lasted a thousand years, Adam,” Michael reminds him. “Even in Hell, this 'good thing’ endured.”

Adam grins, leaning up to press a quick, gentle kiss to Michael’s lips. “See? Romantic. How is this not published in any of the books about Saint Michael? Maybe I should write my own.”

“Write as many as you like.” It is a ridiculous notion, but Michael means it. He will even help him do it. 

Adam chuckles wickedly. “We’ll become New York Times best sellers. You can narrate the audio books!”

“I'll add it to my list,” he jests, “somewhere between ‘pizza’ and ‘remodeling heaven.’”

Adam hums, his expression shifting into something more serious. “About the heaven stuff, my soul—”

“You needn't be concerned,” Michael assures. “Many of the old ways have been revised. Even if they hadn't been, you are no longer just your soul. I would forge our own entrance if I had to, but they could not stop me, and therefore you, if they tried.”

Adam takes an unsteady breath. “You mean—”

“The very first time you said yes, I made you a promise,” Michael says, “and it has always been my intention to keep it. ”

“I know, I know. I just…” Adam laughs, brokenly, beautifully. “It's been so long.”

“As soon as you're ready,” he assures.

“Soon.” Adam’s anxiety is its own entity, his fears and hopes almost indistinguishable, causal as they are to one another. “Not…not right this second, but soon.”

Michael pulls Adam up from the sand and into himself. “Where should we go?”

Adam telegraphs an image of an apartment. “Jack made sure I had a place to go, but I picked up a job a couple weeks ago.”

“A little job, huh?” Michael smiles at the thought. “I'm sorry I missed it.” 

“We could do another shift,” Adam offers, “before we move on. I’m a secretary. Well, we're a secretary, technically. I’d pay good money to see you work the phone.”

Michael receives an image of Adam answering a telephone, greeting visitors and delivering mail. He is less interested in observing the tasks, however, and more concerned by the low set of Adam’s shoulders as he performs them, the tired quality of his voice and the sadness that lingers about his eyes throughout the memory.

“I told you I missed you,” Adam defends. “I was mourning you.”

“No more,” Michael vows, and he feels the relief of Adam’s soul feeding his own at the thought.

The archangel Michael and Adam Milligan, two footnotes in the annals of other people’s stories. Bound together, they are their own book. They’ll write their own story. Find their own purpose. Neither of them will ever be left with nothing again. It is already so easy to move in and out and around one another, that taking flight together is second nature. As if they have always been one; always shared mind and body, neurons and molecules, love and stardust.

Unburdened.

Happy.

Free.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed what you read, you comments and kudos would be greatly appreciated. I'm trying to work through nanowrimo and I could use some fuel for the muse's fire! <3 Much love, ya'll. Chuck himself can't sink this ship!


End file.
